Choosing to use a new technology can often bring much desired productivity, security, and efficiency to a project. It is also fraught with risk and uncertainty. How and when to adopt a new technology for client projects is at the heart of leading a great agency. In this article, Michael Rispoli explains how he evaluated the decision of whether or not to adopt a serverless database for client projects.
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Wondering what’s happenin’ at Smashing? Well, we’ve been busy. Here’s a little story of how we removed floating labels, improved performance on mobile, and launched a new series of articles. Oh, and how you can contribute to Smashing, too.
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The secret to growing a successful web design business is thinking of design as a service, not a product. When you focus on recurring revenue and sell to one targeted niche, you can grow a business faster than ever. In this two-part series, Stephen Roe shares the agency growth lessons we’ve learned. In this first part, we break down the pricing model that’s worked best for us and explain how to leverage it in your business. In the next article, we’ll share proven sales techniques you can use as you scale.
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In this article, we’ll take a close look at some of the changes we made on this very site — running on JAMStack with React — to optimize the web performance and improve the Core Web Vitals metrics. With some of the mistakes we’ve made, and some of the unexpected changes that helped boost all the metrics across the board. Hopefully, this little case-study will be useful to you, and perhaps there are one or two techniques that you might be able to apply to your project right away. In the end, performance is all about a sum of all the fine little details, that, when added up, make or break your customer’s experience.
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Learn about the basics of animation in After Effects by animating one of the most famous type characters and the state of the iMessage App Store in 2018 when it comes to stickers. In this article, Simon Schmid brings you a step-by-step guide of setting up a canvas in After Effects and then he will go through with the animation. You’ll also read about how well the app containing more than 30 animated stickers worked and what some of the specific issues are you might be having on the App Store for iMessage.
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Learning to code can be tough. If you are new to JavaScript and/or have struggles adding it to your skillset, Murat Kemaldar may have an approach for you to overcome those barriers. You are definitely not alone, and you have every right to think that learning to code is a tough nut to crack. In this article, Murat shares his advice on how writing code differently and poetically has helped him overcome his initial struggles and insecurities.
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Project goals, processes, and responsibilities should be clear to everyone on your team. Don’t focus on a unique design per se, unless that’s the main feature of your product, and collaborate with other designers whenever possible. When two people are thinking about the same problem, they will deliver better ideas. In this article, Boyan Kostov shares his story and lessons learned from redesigning a digital interior design shop.
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Linking JavaScript functionality to the DOM can be a repetitive and tedious task. In this article, Rik Schennink explains how ConditionerJS can help make websites more flexible and user-oriented. Step-by-step he’ll improve this logic, and finally, he’ll make a 1 Kilobyte jump to replacing it with Conditioner. By combining all of the following tiny changes, you can speed up page load time and more closely match your functionality to each different context. This will result in improved user experience and as a bonus improve our developer experience as well.
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Each platform has its own limitations and proprietary publishing mechanism. Creating interactive content that works across all of these environments is a real challenge. Publishing content to so many media without lots of extra development overhead can be difficult. In this article, Chris Ashton explains how they’ve approached the problem in BBC’s Visual Journalism department.
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